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Schadenfreude is the peculiar pleasure people derive from others' misfortune.

幸灾乐祸是由于别人的不幸而带来的古怪的愉悦感。

You might feel it when the career of a high-profile celebrity crater, when a particularly noxious criminal is locked up or when a rival sporting team gets vanquished.

当某个高调的名流职业生涯断崖式下滑、某个臭名昭著的罪犯被送进监狱、体育对手输了比赛，你也许就会感受到这种愉悦。

Psychologists have long struggled with how to best understand, explain and study the emotion: It arises in such a wide range of situations that it can seem almost impossible to come up with some sort of unifying framework.

长期以来，心理学家都在努力尝试如何以最佳方式去理解、诠释和研究这种情绪。它出现在很多场合，似乎无法置于某个统一的框架之下。

“幸灾乐祸”定义的多面性

One challenge continues to plague those who research schadenfreude: There's no agreed-upon definition.

长期困扰着研究人员的问题是：“幸灾乐祸”没有普遍认同的定义。

Some think it's best to study the emotion in the context of social comparison, so they'll tend to focus on the way envy or resentment interacts with schadenfreude.

有些人认为最好在社会比较的背景下研究“幸灾乐祸”，因此他们往往聚焦于嫉妒或怨恨与幸灾乐祸之间的相互作用。

Others view the emotion through the lens of justice and fairness, and whether the sufferer deserved his or her misfortune.

其他人以正义和公平的视角来评判受害者是否应该承担他（她）的不幸后果。

Finally, the last group rethinks that schadenfreude emerges out of intergroup dynamics — members of a group deriving joy out of the suffering of those outsides of the group.

最后一组认为“幸灾乐祸”由团体内部动态变化而产生：团体内部的成员为外部人员的痛苦而感到快乐。

Shensheng Wang, PhD Candidate in Psychology at Emory University, and his team believed that the different definitions point to multiple sides of schadenfreude, each of which might have distinct developmental origins.

埃默里大学心理学博士候选人王绅生（音译）和他的团队认为，这些不同的定义指向着“幸灾乐祸”的不同方面，而每个方面都可能有不同的发展起源。

“幸灾乐祸”情绪的发展

There's evidence that children begin to experience schadenfreude early in life.

有证据表明，儿童时期就开始有“幸灾乐祸”的情绪。

For example, at four years old, children found someone else's misfortune — like tripping and falling into a muddy puddle — funnier if that person had previously done something to hurt other children, such as breaking their toys.

例如，四岁的小孩看到以前伤害过其他儿童（如毁坏玩具等）的人倒霉时（比如被绊倒后摔到泥坑里）会更高兴。

Researchers have also found that two-year-old kids primed to be jealous of a peer experience glee when that peer suffers a mishap. By the age of seven, children feel more pleased after winning a game if a rival lost than when both won the game.

研究人员还发现，两岁的儿童就会嫉妒同伴，而当同伴倒霉时，这个孩子就会很开心。七岁的孩子会觉得对手输掉比赛比双方共赢更让人高兴。

Finally, in a 2013 study, researchers had nine-month-old infants observe puppets interacting with one another. Some puppets "enjoyed" the same types of food that the infants enjoyed, while others had a different set of tastes. 

最后，在2013年的一项研究中，研究员让九个月大的婴儿观察木偶之间的互动。有些木偶“喜欢”和婴儿一样的食物，而其它木偶的口味和婴儿不同。

When some puppets "harmed" the other puppets, the researchers discovered that the infants would rather see the puppets who didn't share their tastes be hurt over the ones who did share their tastes.

当一些木偶“伤害”另一些木偶时，婴儿更愿意看到那些和自己口味不同的木偶被伤害。

 综合来看 

Together, these studies show that schadenfreude is a complex emotion that seems to be deeply ingrained in the human condition.

综合来看，这些研究表明“幸灾乐祸”是一种根植于人性中的复杂情绪。

Psychologists Scott Lilienfeld, Philippe Rochat and Shensheng Wang wondered if there could be a way to unite the multiple facets of schadenfreude under the same umbrella.

心理学家Scott Lilienfeld，Philippe Rochat和王绅生想了解，能否在一个体系中统一“幸灾乐祸”情绪的多个方面。

Eventually, they settled on seeing schadenfreude as a form of dehumanization — the act of depicting and viewing another person as less than human.

最终，他们决定将“幸灾乐祸”视为一种去人性化的表现，即从低于人类的角度描述和看待另一个人。

When most people hear the term "dehumanization", they probably go to the worst-case scenario: a complete denial of someone's humanity, a phenomenon relegated to torture chambers, battlefields and racist propaganda.

当大多数人听到“去人性化”这个词时，也许会想到人性灭绝的最糟糕的场景：酷刑室、战场和种族主义宣传。

But this is a misconception. Psychologists have shown that people often view their own group in more human terms, and — in subtle ways — can deny the full humanity of those outside of their group.

但这是一种误解。心理学家表示，人们往往以更人性的方式看待自己的群体，并以一种微妙的方式否认群体外的人的人性。

Shensheng Wang and his team hypothesized that the more empathy someone feels toward another person, the less likely they are to experience schadenfreude when that person suffers.

王绅生（音译）和他的团队假设，当一个人越同情另一个人时，当这个人遭遇不幸的时候，他们会幸灾乐祸的可能性就越小。

So in order for someone to feel schadenfreude toward another person — whether it's a rival, someone in an outgroup or someone who's committed a crime — they'll need to subtly dehumanize them. Only then does the sufferer's misfortune become rewarding.

因此，为了让一个人对另一个人（无论是竞争对手，团体外人员还是罪犯）的不幸而开心，都需要去微妙地否定这些人的人性。只有这样，受害者的不幸才是好事。

This theory hasn't been tested yet, so at the end of Wang's review, he suggests ways schadenfreude's early origins and individual differences can be placed under scientific scrutiny to study this novel hypothesis.

这一理论尚未经过验证，所以王在文末提出，可以科学研究“幸灾乐祸”情绪的早期起源和个人差异。

Linking schadenfreude with dehumanization might sound dark, especially because schadenfreude is such a universal emotion. 

“幸灾乐祸”的情绪是如此普遍，所以将它与“去人性化”联系起来或许有些阴暗。

But dehumanization occurs more often than most would like to think — and we believe it's behind the pang of pleasure you feel when you see someone fail.

但是，“去人性化”的出现频率比大多数人认为的要多。相信当你看到某个人失败时，你感受到不是痛苦，而是快乐。

编辑：张曦

实习生：钟文兴

来源：每日邮报

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